Cuba's Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy Of Social Identities, 1750-2000

Paperback | May 26, 2015

Since the 19th century, assertions of a common, racially-mixed Cuban identity based on acceptance of African descent have challenged the view of Cubans as racially white. For the past two centuries, these competing views of Cuban racial identity have remained in continuous tension, while Cuban women and men make their own racially oriented choices in family formation. Cuba's Racial Crucible explores the historical dynamics of Cuban race relations by highlighting the racially selective reproductive practices and genealogical memories associated with family formation. Karen Y. Morrison reads archival, oral-history, and literary sources to demonstrate the ideological centrality and inseparability of "race," "nation," and "family," in definitions of Cuban identity. Morrison analyzes the conditions that supported the social advance and decline of notions of white racial superiority, nationalist projections of racial hybridity, and pride in African descent.

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Since the 19th century, assertions of a common, racially-mixed Cuban identity based on acceptance of African descent have challenged the view of Cubans as racially white. For the past two centuries, these competing views of Cuban racial identity have remained in continuous tension, while Cuban women and men make their own racially orie...

Karen Y. Morrison is Assistant Professor in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a social historian of the African diaspora.

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Table of Contents

Preface: A Crucible of Race: Historicizing the Sexual Economy of Cuban Social IdentitiesAcknowledgments1. Ascendant Capitalism and White Intellectual Re-Assessments ofAfro-Cuban Social Value to 18202. Slavery and Afro-Cuban Family Formation during Cuba's Economic Awakening, 1763-18203. The Illegal Slave Trade and the Cuban Sexual Economy of Race, 1820-18674. Nineteenth-Century Racial Myths and the Familial Corruption of CubanWhiteness5. Afro-Cuban Family Emancipation, 1868-18866. "Regenerating" the Afro-Cuban Family, 1886-19407. Mestizaje Literary Visions and Afro-Cuban Genealogical Memory, 1920-1958Epilogue: Revolutionary Social Morality and the Multi-Racial NationalFamily, 1959-2000NotesReferencesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"This rigorous yet accessible monograph covers an extensive period of Cuban history from a unique and innovative intersectional perspective. For these reasons, it would make an excellent addition to undergraduate collections in African and African American studies, Latin American studies, women's and gender studies, and history.... Highly recommended." -Choice